LAKEPORT >> The Lake County Community Development and Code Enforcement Department “continues to make progress … despite limited staffing” on addressing code violations and abatements.
During its meeting this week, the Lake County Board of Supervisors were updated on the department’s activities over the past three months by Lake County Code Enforcement Director Richard Coel. According to Coel, the department hired a code enforcement officer, but has not filled a supervisor position.
“Mainly, we believe that has to do with the short-term funding,” Coel explained. “It has been very difficult to get anybody to agree to take that job for potentially only two years. Part of being able to ramp up our efforts is to get the supervisorial position filled.”
Numerous employees already working for the county qualify for the position, Coel continued. But they don’t apply because of the two year limit.
“My feeling is we are in this code enforcement game for the long haul, we have got years’ worth of problems out there to resolve,” Coel asserted. “We need a consistent team to achieve that.”
The newly hired officer, who started working four weeks ago, has been “out daily going through areas, starting up and follow up on existing cases,” Coel explained. Meanwhile, the department’s chief building official has spent a majority of his time working on code enforcement efforts, including working with the Lake County Drug Task Force with unsafe electrical and plumbing at indoor marijuana cultivations when requested.
“We desperately need a dedicated supervisorial position filled for the code enforcement program,” Coel asserted. “There are a number of challenges for us.”
“If there is an opportunity for mistakes to be made, it tends to happen when we are too scattered,” he added.
Challenges facing the code enforcement department include illegal trash dumping, unpermitted grading and construction, as well as abandoned recreational vehicles.
“They get dumped in public right-of-ways and they’re expensive, but they have got to be removed,” Coel explained.
As for illegal dumping, Coel said the county has “no practical cost recovery to address that” despite the issue continuing.
Despite the department’s challenges, it’s main goal is to achieve voluntary compliance wherever possible. Approximately 25 percent of cases are voluntarily abated.
Since January, the department has received 95 complaints, of which 60 were validated and had cases opened, according to Coel. A total of 14 have already voluntarily abated, with a number still in the process of voluntarily compliance.
“We will more often than not work with them on a weekly basis, write progress reports and have inspectors keep any eye on it,” when property owners take a lead and show progress quickly, Coel explained.
Altogether, the department has received an additional $21,000 in late permit fees since the board was last updated on code enforcement activities in December.
No action was required by the board, however consensus was reached to search for additional funding to alleviate staffing issues.
“We have a litany of things that we are confronted with by poor decisions by our predecessors,” District 4 Supervisor Anthony Farrington said. “We’re strapped with trying to rectify decades and decades of poor decisions.”
Farrington cited the paper subdivisions, tule population decimation on the lakefront and a nearly 30 percent inventory of modular homes as examples.
District 2 Supervisor Jeff Smith said that “as far as I’m concerned, whatever it takes, we’ve got to do it. We’re just hurting ourselves.”
“It’s not a two year deal, it’s a 50 year deal at this point,” Smith continued. “It will pay for itself in the long run … because it will raise property values.”
District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown said the funding for staffing was “going to be a balancing act.”
“I think it is a priority … but it is going to take time to find the money,” Brown explained.
Brown also expressed a desire to discuss making property owners pay for abatements, or to sell the problem properties, instead of having taxpayers pay for liens.
“We need to go after them civilly,” Brown asserted. “That’s where the money is.”
Contact J. W. Burch, IV at 900-2022.
